Up Sucker Creek

Photo Courtesy of the Lake Oswego Library

Monday, October 21, 2013

By Jove, I Think I've Got It!

Work, Live and Play! That"s the Smart Growth Way!

I figured out why Lake Oswego is taking on a distinctive "Lake Oswego Style" that it has never seen before - the rustic, Arts and Crafts and Tudor design styles that seem so ... so precious that they belong in a themed resort town. It's because that is what the Visioneers of Lake Oswego's
Downtown were thinking when they remade the Downtown Plan. How do I know? Just take a look at the pictures below - they are highly suggestive of the design styles showing up downtown. It's as if someone(s) wanted to make LO over into a resort so they could play where they live or live where they play. Isn't that what we all want?

Until you eventually want to go home. Or you find you can't afford your staycation. Or perhaps you really liked Lake Oswego as a small town and that is why you moved here and now it isn't LO anymore.

Take a look and see if you can tell where the photos are from. NOTE: Some buildings are 5-6 stories tall. I was looking more at the style rather than height, though several do fit LO code.

Did you figure it out? I am not sure which is which, but the images are from Vail, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Whistler, Telluride, and Bend.

4 comments:

This is what happens when staff planners create their vision and hand to citizen committees or councils and these groups and the public unknowingly is forced into something.Many of our City's committees, boards and councils are "pushed" by staff people into something that they may not really want. All who are on these groups need to understand that the staff works for them as opposed to they are there to rubber stamp staff work.

One senses rather than staff planners it may have indeed been the citizenry-for good or for bad-which rallied for the "Lake Oswego Style".Fairly sure those involved in the original "downtown" aka East End Development Plan were not light-weights that could easily be "pushed".As I recall even former Mayor Alice Schlenker, recently deceased, a Republican, and, "downtown" as well as, Urban Renewal booster was a strong advocate of the "Lake Oswego style".Perhaps, it was thought "the style" would serve to preserve the character of development. For some time , it was actively promoted that the impact of density could be managed by the right style of development.

Also, one senses the "Lake Oswego Style" was thought to reflect the architectural roots of development in Lake Oswego. Rustic, Arts and Crafts, Tudor, French Normandy are very much the architectural styles found in the heyday of Lake Oswego circa the 1930's and 1940's.

As you probably know, "Live, Work and Play" was the marketing slogan used by Paul Murphy and the Ladd Estate Company in the 1930's to sell Lake Oswego.However, it appears few in the target audience would ultimately come to work in Lake Oswego despite choosing to live and play here.